


Dawning

by tinx_r



Category: Riptide (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-27
Updated: 2013-07-27
Packaged: 2017-12-21 12:28:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/900314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinx_r/pseuds/tinx_r
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nick and Cody find each other after Vietnam</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dawning

**Title:** Dawning  
 **Rating:** PG  
 **Summary:** Nick and Cody find each other after Vietnam

Exhausted, afraid and alone. Cody knew those feelings while he was away, knew them like brothers, but what he never figured on was how they'd take over once he found himself back home.

He'd laughed in Vietnam. Laughed and cried and _felt_. Death was close, a hairsbreadth away at every moment, and with every breath he beat it back. With every breath he lived.

Here in California, he can't laugh. He can't cry either, and some days he wonders if he's still breathing. There's nothing left to feel, not anymore. Nothing but fear.

LA's a big place, but vets lurk and Cody's not surprised to run across faces he knows in the dark places of the city. Looking for answers in the jaded Asian girls, in the bottom of the bottle. In the snow white dust that made them forget.

The answers aren't there. Cody's found that out the hard way, tried and failed to fit in. He's nothing now, not college boy, not beach boy, but there's no place here for the man he's become.

There's only one place he's ever belonged; only one place that meant anything to him. Only one place worth living for.

But Nick walked away, and Cody can't forget that, can't go back. He has Nick's number written by the phone, Nick's address in his pocket, but that's the thing about Cody.

He won't go back, can't go back unless he's called.

It takes Cody half a lifetime (most of February, if you wanted to be specific) to realize the ache in his heart, the pain he's carrying, is more than his own. To hear Nick's call in his troubled dreams, to _understand_.

He picks up the phone in the heaving dawn of a stormy day, sick at heart, sick to his stomach, sick of his empty, soulless life.

And then the sun came out.


End file.
